Thank you for showing your ignorance of history and Near Eastern developement!

Err...you're welcome?

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Originally Posted by Draugr

Hellenism was around in existance long before the Arab Mohamedeans conquered the Mediterranean. The roots of Greek learn do extend back into the other Near Eastern civilizations (like the Persians, Levantines, the Babylonians, and terminated at the Sumerians of about 3000 B.C.)

By Hellenistic culture, I was specifically referring to the one that rose and flourished in Ptolemic Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great.

I know that hellenism, the concept of it, had been around long before.

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Originally Posted by Draugr

The Sumerians are the genisesis of civilization: the Sumerians were white.

Well, sure, that's obvious. Just about all the peoples of the middle east are racially caucasian.

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Originally Posted by Draugr

You very claim that Muslims invented the wheel is absured and ridiculous, as well as the claim of astronomy (however tehy did elaborate on astrology)! As astronomic observations were recorded by the Sumerians 3600 years before Mohamed even existed!

Those poor Minoan and Surmarian sailors must have been incredably lost waiting on Muslim Astronomy for 3000 years.

I did not mean to say they invented astronomy, that would be idiotic.

By talking about muslim astronomy, I was talking about the elaboration and the concepts they developed.
"Muslims" technically did not invent the wheel, no. Their predecessors, however, the Mesopotamians, did.

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Originally Posted by Draugr

In the end what does that matter? They never built themselves up indenpendently of outside trade.

I don't think the Romans really did either. Nor did the English, german, French, or Eastern european empires develop independent of outside trade/influence.

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Originally Posted by Draugr

Here's a kicker: salt was more important to the Romans and Europeans than Gold!

Interesting. That would mean that they may have had even closer relations to Africa than I had previously thought.

Not really no...I mean Islam is a religion that began in the year 610 AD. The beginning of the Hellenistic period (following the usual way of dating it, at the death of Alexander the Great), in 323 BC. The period is usually considered to have closed in 30 BC once the Macedonian Ptolemies in Egypt were conquered by the Romans in 30 BC. So, that period had already risen and fallen 650 years before Islam even began, so I don't see how they could have learned anything 650 years before they existed.

I apologize, my terminology here is just plain incorrect. When I say muslims, I tend to associate the word with any people who live in the general middle eastern area. I meant to speak of Arabs.

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Originally Posted by sayf

If by the Muslims you mean the Arabs, then the Arab society of the jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic period, known by Muslims as the "Age of Ignorance") there was no Hellenistic influence at all. That didn't really begin until Umar ibn Abd al-Khattab's conquest of Egypt in 639, and even then, didn't really start to kick off until the time of the Arab philosopher Al-Kindi, who died in 873. What you see during that time is an enormous amount of work directed at translating Greek, Latin, and Syriac works into Arabic. The Arabic language at the time did not have any real philosophical vocabulary at all, and so Al-Kindi had to start creating or modifying cruder Arabic terms that could be seen as corresponding to philosophical categories (like "wujud" for Being, wujud literally being "that which is found", "mahiyah" for essence/quiddity, "mahiyah" literally meaning "What is it?"). Point being, they had learned pretty much nothing from Hellenistic culture when the religion first kicked off.

Agreed, pretty much.

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Originally Posted by sayf

To a large extent the subsequent direction of Muslim philosophy was aping Greco-Roman philosophy. Aristotle was revered as a sage, sometimes as a prophet of Islam itself. Neo-Platonism (which, due to the unfortunate attribution of the Neo-Platonic "Aristotle's Theology" to Aristotle) was also extremely influential. There was not too much contribution or advancement of that thought, except trying to continually force into a theistic mode. Round about the 12th century, the western part of the Muslim world turned on that whole philosophical tradition, dismissed it as heresy taken from alien sources, and the philosophical tradition died shortly thereafter in the western part of the Muslim world (in Persia it continued in a much more mystical way, though that starts to collapse by the 19th century). It is true that European philosophers did benefit a lot from the Arabic translations of some works that were lost, but the Muslims certainly didn't take any of that in a positive direction. Even where it continued to thrive (in Persia), philosophers of the 19th century were still debating issues in terms of Platonic categories, whereas European philosophy had moved far, far, far beyond that by the 17th century.

Sounds about correct to me as well.

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Originally Posted by sayf

I'd agree that there were certainly Muslim triumphs in that area. I'm not somebody who believes that WN means belief that no other race has ever done anything at all at any stage in the history of the cosmos. But, again, this was very, very short-lived, and I think this is crucial. White civilization has continued to develop and thrive; some other civilizations have had brief periods of flourishing, but wound up self-destructing.

Well, then, I suppose if you look at white civilizations altogether as one, big mass, then you are correct, it has continued to thrive for thousands upon thousands of years.

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Originally Posted by sayf

Depends what you mean by Hellenistic. I would agree with you that it's not "stealing".

My apologies for the typo.

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Originally Posted by sayf

They conquered a people, and they started to explore the thought that those people had. Most Muslim intellectuals found it far more profound than anything they had themselves, which is why they embraced it. Once Al-Ghazali started attacking philosophy in the 12th century, though, it was realized that all the things that these Muslim philosophers were talking about really had nothing to do with Islam. Read any tract of Ibn Sina (Avicenna); you won't find one quote from the Qur'an or any hadiths in hardly any of his works. This is why that philosophical tradition was dismissed as being "Greek", hence foreign, hence evil, and wound up ceasing to exist. For the rest of the period the Muslim world stagnated and stagnated until it reached its state today. Basically, once they decided to eject the contributions of white civilization to their own, their intellectual output vanished.

Well, I suppose that may have been the case. Cultural diffusion is very critical to the developement of many civilizations, so the rejection of foreign cultural influences does reflect negatively at times, as I suppose may have been the case with the Muslims.

One thing whites have done is they have taken a number of foreign influences, rather than rejecting them solidly, and they have embraced and built upon them. Hellenistic culture was a good example of that.

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Originally Posted by sayf

Timbuktu was not a center of philosophy. Cairo certainly was during the Fatimid period, but I don't think that's the part of Africa people are talking about here. Timbuktu was more of a centre of legal scholarship, which is very different. Writing a hundred pages on the proper way to use the toilet (this is the type of things that Islamic legal scholars debate) or whether or not a woman who cheats on her husband should be lashed a hundred times and stoned to death, or if she should just be stoned to death without the lashings, doesn't really qualify as a great intellectual achievement, in my view.

Come now, surely you know that they debated about far more importnt issues than that, when it came to things like law, trade, medicine, economic issues, politics, etc, etc.

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Originally Posted by sayf

The whole saga of Robert Mugabe sums it all up to me: the white farmers are the ones who settled that area, the ones who made Rhodesia into a great nation (I think it was, absolutely). Ian Smith made his heroic stand and refused to bow down to international pressure to give up everything the white settlers had achieved and hand it over to a people who, all jokes about dancing around a fire saying "ooga booga!" aside, were obviously not capable of running anything, not even a soul-food joint in Harlem.

Do you think that maybe the white settlers in Zimbabwe could have been a bit more benevolent to the black indigenous peoples? Do you think that had they not come in with the attitude of inherent racial superiority, manifest destiny, and apartheid, that things might have been just a tad bit better overall?
Do you think that the Rhodesian leaders might have made a mistake by doing all of that at times?

I am not excusing black behavior, because the fact is that two wrongs do not make a right and that black people, no matter what, do not have to stoop to the level of barbarism as has Mr. mugabe. But surely, there must be a root cause for all of this.

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Originally Posted by sayf

But, the UDI did not last, and now these people took over. They go around butchering white farmers in the most unbelievable ways imaginable (in my wildest imagination I could never come up with the stuff that I read about), and what have they got for it? The whole country is starving. And whose fault is it? Well, according to them, certainly not a tyrant like Mugabe: it's all because of Britain, the BBCs, white people, whoever. Non-sense, of course.

No, it is a direct result of Mugabe's economic policies. Zimbabwe was barely stable for a period of time in this decade(meaning things were not in a torrential downfall). However, right now, the economy there is worsening by 5% every year and inflation is ridiculous.

Yet, despite this, Mugabe still finds the money to upgrade his airforce with 8 brand new multi million dollar attack aircraft

This is a result of bad leadership, not just white folks being devious, or whatever.

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Originally Posted by sayf

The UDI was a heroic period for the white race. I look at Ian Smith's picture and smile. I am American, never lived in Africa, but I have always felt a connection with the white African settlers. It sadens me that many WN's outside of Africa forget the heroism that was and still is displayed there. The achievement of white colonialists in sub-saharan Africa is truly astounding.

Some of what they did, though, was pretty bad, man.

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Originally Posted by sayf

And if there was any doubts about that achievement, Mugabe and his ilk have proved it: the UDI was smashed, they had their elections in 1980, and that hero of the black race Robert Mugabe has taken over. Now the whole country is starving. Again, like the Muslims, once they decided to eject the contributions of white civilization to their society (if it can even be called a society), everything went to hell.

Well, by exhibiting pure hatred and stooping down to the level exhibited by some white apartheid colonialists, Mugabe guaranteed this fate.

It's not like Zimbabwe could nothave remained successful. But what Mugabe went and did was launch a stupid campaign against a full 12-15% of the populance. He wasted all this money attacking them, and he did not consider the consequences of his actions. What happens when 15% of your populance is eliminated from being productive? You're in trouble, that's what.

They should take a look at what Botswana has done. They still do have economic programs in botswana designed to give blacks some of the wealth that whites had been holding on to far too much. However, for some reason, this has not caused the ridiculous amount of chaos we see in Zimbabwe. Why?

The Botswanans simply accepted whites as being a part of their history, like it or not, and saw no reason to launch some daft military campaign to eliminate them.

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Originally Posted by sayf

The similar collapse of South African society, the unbelievable explosion in crime, proves the same point. But, it was and is a heroic effort, from the Voortrek to Orania. If the rest of the country can't be reclaimed, then at least, for the time being, a smaller Volkstaat could bring back the glory days. Afrikaaner culture is a beautiful thing; I love everything about it, from the language to the history to Charlize Theron.

Ah, yes, Ms. Theron, she is indeed quite attractive.

Yeah, I'm black, and I did say that. Don't care if you get angry with me, it's just the truth.

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Originally Posted by sayf

Also, just a personal point that people may disagree with, but I think it's unfortunate that we are allowing blacks to monopolize the term African. Afrikaaners and other members of the white race in South Africa, to me, have as much a right to be called African as I do to be called American, if not more. They are the only ones who brought glory to that continent. If we want to talk about how horrible African history has been, we should not ignore the one shining point in it: the "white Africans."

Well, Africa has a very long and vast history, so there are many points in the continents history that have to do with black Africans and can be considered as great if not greater than white colonial African history. That particular portion is really just very small compared to other things like West Africa, Axum, Nubia, etc, etc.

But yes, you are correct. A white person who has had deep, long standing roots in Africa has every right to be called an African.

By the same token, a black who has deep roots in America, or England, or other places, has every right to be called a true American, or Englishman, etc, etc.

Roads in africa where the white amn and his equipment are not there to fix them. Please note on the second photo that the repairs to the road where done by a white man. Me.

Do you want me to show you a pictures of roads that aren't like backroads. I already know your rebuttal, "those roads have to be taken care of by whites". Oh, sorry I was out actually doing something to help my community, so I could not respond to your post calling my a liar, it was quite laughable.

One thing whites have done is they have taken a number of foreign influences, rather than rejecting them solidly, and they have embraced and built upon them. Hellenistic culture was a good example of that.

Yes, it definitely is. This is also why I think being too narrow in definitions of whiteness is a problem. The interaction of white cultures with each other I think is a very important thing.

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Come now, surely you know that they debated about far more importnt issues than that, when it came to things like law, trade, medicine, economic issues, politics, etc, etc.

Not really. I think a lot of that is a kind of neo-Muslim nationalism that's developed. Law has always been the queen of sciences in Islamic seminaries, and everything else was subordinated to that. Number one thing was always rote memorization of the Qu'ran.

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Do you think that maybe the white settlers in Zimbabwe could have been a bit more benevolent to the black indigenous peoples? Do you think that had they not come in with the attitude of inherent racial superiority, manifest destiny, and apartheid, that things might have been just a tad bit better overall?

Do you think that the Rhodesian leaders might have made a mistake by doing all of that at times?

I think the subsequent behavior of the populace proves that the attitude of superiority, manifest destiny, and apartheid were all correct. I'm always in favor of benovelence, but benovelence sometimes requires a firm hand.

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I am not excusing black behavior, because the fact is that two wrongs do not make a right and that black people, no matter what, do not have to stoop to the level of barbarism as has Mr. mugabe. But surely, there must be a root cause for all of this.

Well, that's what this whole thread is about, isn't it. I think genetics and race play a major role. The level of violence is just not explicable in terms of purely socioeconomic terms. It's not even a question of it not being an excuse; it's not even a valid explanation.

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Yet, despite this, Mugabe still finds the money to upgrade his airforce with 8 brand new multi million dollar attack aircraft

That's precisely it. Same problem in the Middle East. It is a mentality in these cultures that the ruler simply owns the country and has no obligations whatsoever to his people. Behind all the nationalist and racist rhetoric, that is all it comes down to.

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Some of what they did, though, was pretty bad, man.

Such as?

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Well, by exhibiting pure hatred and stooping down to the level exhibited by some white apartheid colonialists, Mugabe guaranteed this fate.

The question is why this is *always* what most black African leaders stoop to. Nelson Mandela is more clever about it, but if race and apartheid plays no role in it, then there is no reason why he can't stop the crime explosion in South Africa.

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Ah, yes, Ms. Theron, she is indeed quite attractive.

Yeah, I'm black, and I did say that. Don't care if you get angry with me, it's just the truth.

I think white beauty is universally appreciable.

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Well, Africa has a very long and vast history, so there are many points in the continents history that have to do with black Africans and can be considered as great if not greater than white colonial African history. That particular portion is really just very small compared to other things like West Africa, Axum, Nubia, etc, etc.

I'm still not seeing the grand achievemants. A bone with holes in it or the madrassah in Timbaktu seem hardly comparable to the industrialization of Rhodesia and South Africa.

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But yes, you are correct. A white person who has had deep, long standing roots in Africa has every right to be called an African.

By the same token, a black who has deep roots in America, or England, or other places, has every right to be called a true American, or Englishman, etc, etc.

If they contribute. I don't have any problem considering blacks in America as American, in theory. They certainly aren't African as much as they'd like to pretend that they are. Liberia was a catastrophe for a reason. But, they aren't willing to participate in this society on a proper level. Doing everything in their power to tear this society to shreds and turn our cities into war-zones discounts them from having that title. A black person who is willing to turn their backs on that and play a constructive role, I have every willingness to accept as part of the society, provided the proper racial boundaries are kept. Turning their backs on it means turning their backs on the whole black race war ideology. If a black leader wants to come out and acknowledge, for example, the unbelievable degree of hate crimes that are committed by blacks against white people (crimes I myself have been a victim of), if they want to acknowledge where black people have gone wrong in this country without any whitewashing (no pun intended), and if they want to work to stop that insanity, great. I'll talk to him all day. He will have all the respect I can give to somebody who is not of my racial kin. If he wants to sit down and work with white leaders to create some space they can live in America and do their own thing as genuine, dare I say "Afro-Americans", great, their own Volkstaat, 40 acres and a mule or whatever they want (within reason). If Hitler could work with the Bosnian Muslims, certainly we can work with black americans who are willing to quit the gangster posturing bs and act like human beings.

But, that's not going to happen. If they want to riot and burn down cities we built, then we have every right to defend ourselves, our families, and our land. We've certainly tried. It hasn't worked. Look at prisons. Why did the Aryan Brotherhood start? Constant violence, rape, terrorism, every heinous thing being done by black and hispanic inmates against white inmates, for no reason except they were white. So, they got what they asked for.

Um...the Muslims already had learned quite a lot prior to the rise of Hellenistic culture.

You know: things like the wheel? Muslim astronomy, etc, etc, etc.

By the same token, couldn't I also say that many Greeks to some of their influence from cultural diffusion with Egypt?
Islam did not steel anything. Hellenisitc culture itself was a combination of Asian, Muslim, and greek learning.

Not all of them were, but there were some parts of Europe that used Gold as their currency. They got this gold from West Africa indirectly through trade with north africans.

They knew this themselves. Once they found out that the gold they were getting came from a huge source in west Africa, they went to go and find it for themselves.
That was when the Portugese first began sailing to Ghana and other places along the West African coast.

Research the Akan philosophy.

I an give you some sources on it in particular, as it was a portion of what was taught in Timbuktu, but I only have literary sources for the most part.

????? There were no muslims prior to the greek empire. Mohamed only arrived inabout 600 AD. Henc ethey are post roman as well, unless Byzantium is taken as the remnant of the roman empire.

No, they were not. What you are putting forth is nothing more than a silly stereotype pervaded commonly in America.
Not all African's were running around fires yelling ooga booga. The history shows otherwise.

1. Your posts shows no understanding of traditional African dress. Croth covering leaves are not a common feature.

At all.

2. Ooga booga is not commonly yelled at all, as the cultural language of the Mande people is old, and vast. Nothing like "ooga booga".

In otherwords, no, they are not.

I know the truth. I know FAR more about Africa, it's cultures, and histories, than you do, and your post has simply confirmed that for me.
I know the truth about what African's do. I know all about their cultural rituals. I have close contacts with many Africans, some in my immediate family, who are of the very ethnic groups I'm talking about.

Bottomline: I know the truth. I can tell the truth. I am telling the truth. What about you?

So a 15 year old american negro knows more about africa and speaks the truth? Do you know what haughtiness is? The bible describes it well. I suggest you read the prophesy of Cush (origin of the blacks).

africa is a huge place. at 15 never having lived there you know the truth about all of it? cultures, histories etc. Then why are not a professor?

And by the way, it is not blacks running around yelling ooga booga that bothers me. It is when they rampage yelling Bulala!! (Kill in Zulu), as happens all to frequently.

But that is OK as well. Our vuurwapens (firearms) have a great response. they scream Ra ta ta ta at 500 words per minute in 20 or 50 word sentences in reply! Then the Bulala turns into 'Aseblief Baas!' Funny how they then speak Die Taal (the afrikaans language) so well and the Umlingu magicallyg becomes Baas again

I posted pics on the ex military pics thread of what happens to blacks that want to continue with their langauge of mayhem and refuse to listen to die Wit Mense.

Again, arabs are not the orginal inhabitants of mots of north africa. They came out of saudi arabia with the spread of islam. Of course they then interbred with the natives.

I think it is also worth pointing out, in line from my earlier post, that all of this intellectual tradition of the Muslims came from their use of Hellenistic culture (something they later abandoned). Timbuktu and such places, being the fruits of that Islamic culture, are the fruits of that Hellenstic culture. Once that culture was jettisoned, nothing was left. Who has even heard of Timbuktu these days? There is a reason, obviously.

The other thing is that the Arabs were originally just some of the people in the Arabian peninsula. All the "Arab world" was not Arab at all, and there is no racial similarity between a person who is physically 100% caucasoid in Syria or Lebanon (blone hair, blue eyes) and between somebody who is black as night from Sudan. But they are called "Arab", because they were "Arabized" in having Arabic made their mother language. The Qur'an almost always speaks about the actual Arabs in the most derogatory terms, as a bunch of backwards, superstitious, violent, dishonest, and hypocritical people.